Music... Baseball... Video Games....... you know, the important things in life.

Monday, August 11, 2014

Top 20 NES Super Mario Moments: Number 8

8: Traction Control
Mario's ice worlds (one per game!) get a bad rep.

Okay, controlling Mario as he slips and slides around some frozen hellhole, completely unable to maintain any sort of his momentum without jumping first is irritating, but it's a gameplay mechanic that can lead to some interesting ideas.

Also, here's as good a place as any to admit that I liked the stage music to this world

Case in point, level 4-2 in Super Mario 2. It's not hard, and even as a child, it didn't take long to commit the section to muscle memory. There's just something cool about jumping, ducking, and sliding through the oncoming waves of enemies. Almost as good is the fact that once you're done with this, you get to play amongst the whales, which is one of the most unique and interesting sections of the 8-bit Mario games (albeit annoying as hell, which is why it's not on this list).

My cousin thought that it was easier to do this as Luigi. He was incorrect.